Re: Autoconf testing results.

[Akim Demaille]

Pavel Roskin <address@hidden> writes:

> Hello, Akim!
> 
> > Ash 0.2 is already burned for being too broken.  Does it fail
> > gracefully?  Is the user warned properly?
> 
> It dumps core gracefully, without saying a single word:
> 
> $ ash configure
> Segmentation fault

That seems like a message clear enough :)


> > Right.  Should be handled as autoscan is.
> 
> We don't have a test for autoscan at all.

Ah, this explains pretty well why it doesn't fail :)


> > > The issues with ash-0.2 can be worked around by creating temporary files,
> > > but I doubt whether we should do it.
> >
> > Nope, let's not.  This shell is already too dangerous (given the way
> > it propagates or does not propagate $?).  But having a nice message
> > displayed to warn the user would be a good thing.
> 
> How about something like this in AS_SHELL_SANITIZE:
> 
> if (`exit 1`; :); then :

Ah ah ah, it's true, I had forgotten about this one :)

> else
>   AC_MSG_ERROR([Sorry, this shell is not capable of running this script.])
> fi
> 
> I haven't yet figured out why AC_MSG_ERROR doesn't work as expected at
> this point.
> 
> Important questions:
> 
> 1) Do we want it to be in AS_SHELL_SANITIZE?
> 2) Should we check the other bugs, such as string size limit?

Given that after all the message is clear, frank failures such as dump
core seem to be good enough a message.  Before we were afraid of ash
0.2 because it had subtle errors that could have configure end with
success, but having computed junk.

Given that now the user cannot ignore the fact she's using a broken
shell, maybe we don't need to good into this.

I'd like to have the opinion from Alexandre and Paul on this one.  I'd
say, let it die.